Chapter 49. Moonblooded

They had known it was coming, though no one possessed a word for it. An unspoken dread hung in the air, pressing on their hearts like the hush before a storm.

The sky was the first to betray itself. Not with thunder or lightning, but with a heavy silence that stretched across the heavens. Stars that should have glowed bright and steady blinked out one by one, their light snuffed as if by an unseen hand. The wind, which for weeks had borne only the scent of scorched wood and damp moss, shifted to carry something far older—a memory of earth-breath and primeval secrets, neither rot nor flame, but the ache of time itself unfolding.

In the ridgelands, every creature sensed the change. Deer and elk slipped away into shadowed hollows. Hawks and thrushes fell silent at dawn, their songs muzzled by an intangible dread. Even the river that wound beneath Thornroot’s gnarled roots stilled to a cold, glassy calm, as though it dared not move in deference to the gathering gloom.